At least 5,000 people have turned out in Moscow for a rally to denounce a government crackdown on independent media and Russian state television's news coverage of the crisis in neighboring Ukraine.

The demonstration in central Moscow on April 13 was called a "March of Truth."

Historian Andrei Zubov told the crowd that by lying to the Russian people on television, the government was leading the country toward "an abyss."

Zubov lost his job at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations after writing an article comparing Putin's annexation of Crimea to Adolf Hitler's seizure of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland in 1938

State television has portrayed the new pro-Western government in Ukraine as "fascist."

The Kremlin denies allegations of censorship or pressure on the media.